U of T's Open Access Week looks towards future of scholarship
Research must be available and easy to find, says final speaker, Stian Haklev, OISE PhD student
reposted from University of Toronto News
by: Kelly Rankin
U of T Libraries’ four-day series of tri-campus Open Access Week talks wrapped up Oct. 22 with a presentation about open scholarship and the future of scholarly communications.
The lecture, given by OISE PhD student Stian Haklev, was a fitting end to the fourth annual event that included participation by 40 groups from countries such as Japan, South Africa and Ireland, with some presentations being delivered via webcast and other online presentation-sharing media.
The week provides an opportunity for academic and research community to learn about the potential benefits of open access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in open scholarship.
Haklev defined an open scholar as someone who not only allows free access and reuse of his or her scholarly work, but makes the intellectual projects and processes digitally visible while encouraging ongoing criticism of his or her work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it -- at any stage of its development.
“I want my research to be part of the scholarly discourse,” explained Haklev.
The first step in making that happen is to move beyond the established notions of open access -- that peer-reviewed research should be available to everyone free of cost.
“Open access is a huge step for people already,” he acknowledged. However, Haklev thinks scholars could benefit a great deal from developing strong online profiles and utilizing the growing array of electronic resources.
For example, many traditional journals allow researchers to self-archive. So, why not post published articles on a personal website or in a digital media repository, such as U of T‘s T-space https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca? Doing this allows researchers to continue having their work peer-reviewed - an important step in the tenure process - as well as exposing their work to an audience beyond the journal’s general readership.
However, making research available is only part of the solution. It is also important to make it easy to find. Haklev says what makes digital repositories ideal tools for exposing research is they will persist longer than most personal websites, and the information stored is tagged with metadata, making it easier for search engines to locate.
He also suggests posting work in more than one place, such as subject specific repositories like the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) www.eric.ed.gov or arxiv.org for physics papers, and that scholars should also consider submitting articles to one of the open journals listed in the directory of open access journals www.doaj.org.
View webcasts of OISE hosted Open Access Week presentations
Funding Agency Panel: Opening Up Access
presented by Craig McNaughton (SSHRC), Andrea Smith (CIRH) and Monique Zaloum (NSERC)
Oct. 18, 2010
What it Means to be an Open Scholar
presented by Stain Haklev, OISE PhD student
Oct. 21, 2010